When the thought process starts with the car and how to make it electric, you end up with what you see today:

electric cars that cost more than most people are willing to pay, billions of dollars invested that will never see a return, the need for a national fast-charging infrastructure, and the lack of the $10’s of billions needed to build out and support that national fast-charging infrastructure.

iThinkDifferent starts by asking how people travel and how can that be electrified? By asking how we actually use our cars, we find out that the vast majority of our driving isn’t on winding roads by the ocean – or taking our whole neighborhood on a picnic, slip-sliding down the streets of San Francisco in a vehicle that can take both the kids and the equipment – or racing through vacant city streets – or taking cross-country trips. By asking how we actually use our cars, we find that the vast majority of our travel is just us, and sometimes one other person, driving less than 40 to 60 miles per day.

iDriveDifferent is about changing the world. iDriveDifferent is building and driving vehicles that fit how we actually drive most of the time, using a gasoline-powered car for the 30% of long-distance and/or multiple passenger trips that we make. iDriveDifferent is about increasing energy efficiency, improving air quality, and lowering your cost of travel while still getting all your driving jobs done. One prescient author recognized and wrote about this opportunity to bring real change in this way (emphasis ours):

“Overweight and oversize cars and chronic underutilization of vehicles are the two most wasteful habits affecting the world’s consumption of transportation energy, of which about 95 percent comes from petroleum. Using vehicles that fit driving patterns would greatly improve vehicle utilization and significantly reduce the energy intensity of personal transportation.” -- Alternative Cars in the 21st Century, Riley, p. 45

What would happen if 1 in 7 of us commuted to work in a 200 MPGe electric vehicle that fit our commute needs? Not only would our fuel costs dramatically drop, not only would the cost of the electric vehicle we drove cost less than most gasoline-powered cars, but nationally, there would be 10 million electric vehicles averaging 200 MPGe. Averaging this out with the other 60 million vehicles commuters used, which average 25-mpg, our national commuting average would double, to 50 mpg.

That changes the world.

iThinkDifferent asks how we can make this world a better place by what we drive. iDriveDifferent answers that question with energy efficient vehicles that are built to fit how we drive and so are affordable enough for mass adoption, which then leads to a changed world.